The Writers’ Room Online Course: Learn How to Design Engaging Conversational Experiences With AI-powered Digital People
Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables companies to build highly engaging and valuable relationships with their customers. Now more than ever, the need for safe, engaging, and scalable communication between customers and brands is growing, which is speeding up Natural Language Processing (NLP) adoption across every industry. With more and more companies looking into Conversational AI technology for the first time and a need for more thoughtful and relatable online interactions, the demand for empathetic Digital People has emerged. With this need comes the demand for conversational AI researchers, designers, and engineers that build and define the paradigm for what’s possible, and the best practices to use when it comes to these embodied digital agents. At Soul Machines, we believe that Conversation Design can be taught and crowdsourced; we want to empower the next generation of writers with all the tools they need to help us build the future of engagement through Digital People.
As a key part of this mission to create, enable, and democratize a platform of astonishing AI technology that enriches personal experiences through our Digital People, we are excited to share meaningful updates to The Writers’ Room.
In this blog, we’ll cover the following:
- What is The Writers’ Room?
- What will students learn in The Writers’ Room?
- The basics of Conversational AI and how it relates to Digital People
What is The Writers’ Room?
The Writers’ Room is Soul Machines’ free online course that teaches the basics and best practices in conversation design in the context of Digital People, instructed by expert Conversation Designers at Soul Machines.
“This is a crash course in the nuts and bolts of conversation design, how it works, and what makes it successful. Relying on the Digital Person’s personality when handling unexpected responses is a revelation.” — Matthew Hart, Creative Director
Apply to The Writers’ Room here
By the end of The Writers’ Room, you’ll learn the following:
- How to design conversational experiences for Soul Machines Digital People, instructed by experienced Conversation Designers
- Where to start when creating conversational interactions
- How to leverage conversational design tooling and prototyping in your design process
- How to build personas and why these are important
- Conversational best practices and tips and tricks
- Conversational development tools and NLP systems
If accepted, you will gain access to our exclusive learning portal where you will learn the basics of Conversation Design, build personas, send assignments and get tailored feedback on your work, and apply conversational AI best practices, all at your own pace. Upon finishing the course, you will have multiple conversations under your belt that you can use in your portfolio, become a Gold / Silver / Bronze-Certified Conversationalist, and get the chance to be invited to work with Soul Machines customers and partners for compensated projects through our Conversation Marketplace. Our Conversation Marketplace, launching in Q1 2021, will allow our most qualified certified Conversationalists to create profiles, post conversation samples, and bid for compensated gig work with trusted Soul Machines partners. Attendance to the Conversation Marketplace will be invite-only, and will be limited to our highest-performing Conversationalists. This project is an exploration around the future of work and crowdsourcing the components of Digital Person projects.
“It is clear that you think about conversation design deeply, so I’m excited to learn more. I appreciate the attention to detail here as I can see how it will be critical for real projects and interactions.” — Rob Nail, Associate Founder and Former CEO of Singularity University
The Soul Machines Writers’ Room Course includes:
- 10+ hours of on-demand video
- Numerous articles and best practices guides
- Full lifetime course access
- Access on mobile and web
- 5+ course assignments and tailored weekly feedback
- Certification of Completion — based on perceived skill (Gold, Silver, or Bronze)
- The possibility of being selected to join our exclusive Conversation Marketplace
Our Conversation Marketplace, launching in Q1 2021, will allow our most qualified certified Conversationalists to create profiles, post conversation samples, and bid for compensated gig work with trusted Soul Machines partners. Attendance to the Conversation Marketplace will be invite-only, and will be limited to our highest-performing Conversationalists.
Since our initial launch in July 2020, 15 students have completed the course and have become Certified Conversationalists. If you’re experienced in interactive design, engineering, technical copywriting, or screenwriting, we think you’ll be a great fit to the Writers’ Room. Despite this, we encourage folks of all backgrounds to apply — our students have come from Game Design, Research, Events, Engineering, Psychology, and so much more.
As a successful example, we highlight Lana Gabriel, an event planner with a Masters in Literature that was impacted by COVID-19. Lana turned back to her roots as a writer, and found The Writers’ Room. “The Writers’ Room offers a unique opportunity to learn the process of creating an engaging and inclusive Digital Person through in-depth lessons, comprehensive assignments, and personalized feedback,” says Lana, who has since finished the course as a gold-certified Conversationalist. “[The Writers’ Room] helped me grow as a writer, and facilitated a transition into tech that writers might not have otherwise.”
“The Writers’ Room offers a unique opportunity to learn the process of creating an engaging and inclusive Digital Person through in-depth lessons, comprehensive assignments, and personalized feedback. It helped me grow as a writer, and facilitated a transition into tech that writers might not have otherwise.” — Lana Gabriel, Freelance Writer & Event Manager
Conversation Design Through Digital People
We’ll save the specifics for a separate blog, but broadly speaking, Conversation Design is about defining the interactions between the user and a conversational agent (i.e. a chatbot, virtual assistant, Digital Person, etc.) based on human conversations. As pioneers at the forefront of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), our team of researchers have successfully recreated a Digital Brain with Autonomous Animation that replicates the way we handle everyday interactions, driven by deep research into neuroscience, psychology and cognitive science. More than simply chatbots and virtual assistants, our Digital People are multimodal and are fully autonomous in their responses. This is what makes our Digital People astonishingly unique in our industry today — they can see you, understand you, and relate to you, autonomously in real time.
We partner with the world’s most innovative companies to deploy Digital People that embody their values, represent their brand, and connect with each and every customer and employee in a secure, scalable and powerful new way.
Conclusion
As a Soul Machines Conversation Designer, you will have the opportunity to help our customers and partners connect with their customers as you help us build what’s next in this emerging technology, and have the opportunity to be hired and compensated for your work through our Conversation Marketplace. Conversation design is the next frontier, and it will only get bigger as more industries adopt this technology. If you’re a writer looking to broaden your toolkit, or a passionate technologist looking for a way to transition into AI, we invite you to Apply to The Writers Room here.
“I wanted to thank you and all the teachers in the course. It was exceptional: great and well-organized classes, resourceful material, and suitable assignments; I learned a lot and it opened my eyes to a whole new concept of interaction and perceiving conversations.” -Aglaia Ruffino Jalles, Linguistics Student
Interested in learning more about Digital People? Visit us at www.soulmachines.com.
